Halvard Buhaug

Research Professor at PRIO; Professor of Political Science, NTNU

Background

​​​​Bio Note

Halvard Buhaug is Research Professor at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO); Professor of Political Science at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU); and Associate Editor of Journal of Peace Research and Political Geography. He leads and has directed a number of research projects on security dimensions of climate change and geographic aspects of armed conflict, funded by the European Union, the World Bank, the US Department of Defense, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, and the Research Council of Norway. Recent publications include the award-winning, co-authored Inequality, Grievances, and Civil War (Cambridge University Press 2013) and journal articles in, inter alia, Global Environmental Change, International Security, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Political Geography, and PNAS. He is the recipient of the 2015 Karl Deutsch Award and holder of an ERC Consolidator Grant.

PRIO started tracking events online in 2007. This listing is not complete. Past events may be mentioned in our news archive.

Publications

For more details on my work, including ​access to all publications, visit my personal web page at www.hbuhaug.com. A complete and up-to-date list of my article publications is accessible through ResearcherID.

Blog Posts

Political violence correlates strongly with climate: Civil conflict risk is seven to ten times higher in dry and tropical climates than in continental climate zones. Yet, there is little evidence that climatic variability and change are important in understanding this pattern. The prospect of climate change causing forced migration and food and economic insecurity, meanwhile, raises new concerns about possible future conflict scenarios. Climate change is not likely to have a common and universal effect on armed conflict risk. Indirect effects of climate on conflict may work via migration, food insecurity or economic shocks. Many of the factors that increase ...

Does climate change constitute a threat to peace and security? Many agree that it does. The US administration’s new National Security Strategy, launched last month, portrays climate change as ‘an urgent and growing threat.’ And this week, a new study appears to add scientific credibility to this concern, suggesting human-caused climate change contributed to the drought that preceded the Syrian civil war. So does the Syrian case represent a general pattern, where climate changes and extremes are systematically increasing conflict risk? The short answer is no. But if scientists want to explore these links more closely, there are a few ...